Thursday, March 30, 2006

Fiterman's Rule

For unknown reasons, I decided to go down to the World Trade Center site tonight after work. I'll post the rest of my video stills tomorrow. For now, you get Fiterman Hall. It's amazing to me that there are buildings down there that are useless, but remain standing. (And that almost five years later, the site is still just a big hole in the ground.) I guess they have to fully decontaminate before they can "deconstruct them," but, come on, five years?

The Fiterman, apparently, will be taken down later this year. Its facade and upper floors were mangled when Building 7 collapsed. In my picture above, you can see the white facade to the left, and then the huge area where the rest of it had been to the right. If you look at the map, it's the building north of WTC 7, listed as "30 West Broadway." (The gray buildings are the ones that are no longer there.) I was standing just north of the "7" in "WTC 7" on the map. The western side of the old 7 is where the new 7 stands (but has not yet opened). The eastern side is the new 7's plaza, not yet finished.

It also amazes me how close they let people get to these unstable buildings. (There is a screen over Fitey, though it's hard to see.) Tomorrow you'll see my shots from the base of the Deutsche Bank building directly south of the WTC--the one that human bones were found in a few days ago. It will come down in May.